Tobias Beard

Editor’s Note: This story on Rob Coles’ life as a Thomas Jefferson descendant and impersonator originally ran in C-VILLE Weekly on June 19, 2012. According to his obituary in The Daily Progress, Mr. Coles died peacefully Tuesday. For a few minutes before he goes on stage, assuming there is a stage, Rob Coles sits quietly […]

When Stephen Canty watched his little brother leave on his first deployment as a Marine in the fall of 2011, he recognized the grin on Joe’s face as the same one he had worn himself three years earlier. They’d all been grinning then, the guys in 1st battalion, 6th Marines, Charlie Company, excited to be […]

The decision to buy a gun came suddenly. I was gulping down coffee before work and reading about the latest shooting, when my right to bear arms overwhelmed me. I ran out into the Virginia sunshine, jumped in my Prius, and headed to Walmart. Ever since the Aurora movie theater shooting, I’ve been consumed by […]

I discovered that there was no department anywhere dealing with the fact that we’re being visited, and that there ought to be some sort of diplomatic outreach. CSETI is our global attempt, and now we have several thousand teams who are learning these protocols that are very controversial…

In 2011, Sub Pop, the indie record label that first signed Nirvana and almost single-handedly sold grunge to the world, released Black Up, the first full-length album from Shabazz Palaces, one of Seattle Hip-Hop’s biggest stars.

The Tonsler Park Recreation Center is busy at 4:30pm on a Wednesday. The long, L-shaped main room bustles with games of pool and chess, people coming and going past the old school Ms. Pac-Man game and the foosball table. Adults watch the T.V. on the wall, or sit and talk in small groups. You get […]

In early 1986, Hospice of the Piedmont needed help with a patient who had less than a month to live. The organization’s purpose, then and now, is to care for terminal patients, but this patient had AIDS, and AIDS patients were different. By the end of 1984, there were 10 reported AIDS cases in Charlottesville, […]

In Norway last Friday, Anders Breivik was sentenced to 22 years in prison for killing 77 people and wounding 242. Six days later I sat in court and watched as George Huguely’s jury-recommended sentence of 26 years for the murder of one woman, Yeardley Love, was reduced to 23 years. American prison sentences start big […]

“One big problem is change. [The older residents] don’t understand change is happening and why it’s happening, and sometimes I don’t understand it myself.” – Jimmy Dettor, lifelong Belmont resident. From the documentary, Still Life With Donuts. When she arrived in Charlottesville in the summer of 1976, Joan Schatzman didn’t think of herself as a […]

Gyaltsen Sangpo Druknya was born in the northeast corner of the Tibetan Plateau in a region called Amdo, a land of arid grasslands, huge blue lakes, and deep, pine covered valleys. Three of Asia’s most famous rivers—the Yangtze, the Yellow, and the Mekong—have their beginnings in the snow-covered mountains that ring the area. Amdo is […]

A partly cloudy day, late March, unseasonably warm. Two men look up as I step into a small clearing in the woods beyond the coal tower. “Hope I’m not bothering you.” “It’s cool,” one of them says. He moves over on the makeshift bench so I have room to sit down. “I saw you taking […]

Sometime in the late ’90s, while searching online for information on getting high via over-the-counter drugs, I stumbled across a bizarre website detailing the adventures of a bunch of punk rock kids living in a big house in the country, right outside my hometown of Charlottesville.

Woodberry Payne (pictured) says that certain places make good horses. But mostly, he said, what makes a good horse is something intangible inside them. It’s about a horse’s desire, what’s in a horse’s heart. (Photo by Carissa Dezort) The spring race at Foxfield is Saturday, April 28, and Woodberry Payne will be there as usual. […]

We wait in the sunshine, in the unexpected warmth of a late February day, for a sign from inside the courthouse that a verdict has been reached. The word verdict means, in it’s original Latin, “to say the truth,” but a legal verdict is the synthesis of 12 opinions into a single pronouncement. Commonwealth’s Attorney […]

During jury selection, the prosecution asked each prospective juror if he or she would feel comfortable judging someone, a question that’s harder to answer than you might think. It’s in our nature to judge others, their hair, their clothes, how good looking or smart they are, we judge and convict people for a million minor […]

The Charlottesville Circuit Court opens at 8:30am, but the Huguely trial usually starts at 9:30. The first hour is taken up with other business, like Thursday’s drug court. Men and women, a clear majority of them African-American, file in to meet with their court appointed attorneys and plead their cases. Judge Edward Hogshire hears updates […]

The Huguely Trial Blog picks up tomorrow with a recap of Monday’s day in court. Look for more detailed analysis of the evidence and arguments used in the first week in Tuesday’s print edition of C-VILLE Weekly. Here’s a preview…